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97 Seconds
97 Seconds is a 4th season episode of House which first aired on October 9, 2007. A wheelchair bound man is admitted after he passes out in his wheelchair. House decides to make a game of it and pits the female applicants against the male applicants with the losing team being eliminated. The “Cutthroat Bitch” decides to play both sides to increase her chances. However, after one of the applicants prescribes what seems to be the right treatment, the patient doesn’t improve and House has to work harder than ever to save the patient. Meanwhile, House becomes intrigued with a man who has suffered a near-death episode. See The Applicants for more information about the cast of this episode. Recap A wheelchair-bound man is out with his companion dog when he suddenly lapses into unconsciousness in the middle of the street. His dog manages to advert disaster by warning an oncoming driver and gets the attention of passers-by to help. Meanwhile, the remaining applicants are just hanging out in the lecture hall waiting for House. As the manipulative applicant starts to leave, House shows up. He wants to split them into teams, and finally decides to go by sex. However, the manipulative applicant wants to join the men. House hesitates to allow this and finally decides to leave it up to the men. The men refuse to let her join. The teams split up. They discuss strategies. Thirteen suspects House already knows the answer. The men’s team decides to run as many tests as they can. Meanwhile, Cameron is busy in the emergency room. Amber comes to her and tells her House has turned patient care into a game. Thirteen thinks the patient has encountered a parasite - strongyloides during his trip to Thailand and gives the patient treatment - two tablets of ivermectin. The South Asian applicant comes in to do tests and has another of the applicants carry the patient to the bathroom to take a stool sample. House goes to see Cuddy. She tells him he can't make a competition out of patient care. Cuddy thinks House already knows what is wrong. He wants to talk about the clinic patient. House threatens to fire all the applicants if Cuddy stops him. Meanwhile, Foreman is leading his own team at New York Mercy Hospital, doing a differential in a manner very similar to House. After realizing their patient might be having vison problems due to the fact she's given up crossword puzzles, he thinks it is aspergillis and orders treatment. Amber comes to the men offering help so House will have to pick her as the only remaining woman. She says she has a diagnostic strategy directly from one of House's former fellows. The plan is to have bugs bite the patient and then test the bugs' excrement for parasites - xenodiagnosis. However, the patient goes into respiratory distress when they try it. The patient improves when he goes on oxygen. His problem is that the air is going into his stomach instead of his lungs. However, Thirteen thinks it's related to the condition that makes him wheelchair-bound. One of The Twins suggests putting him on a tilt table. House punishes the male team for doing too many tests by making them sit out, and tells them one of them isn't a doctor. Meanwhile, Foreman is having problems diagnosing his patient when the first diagnosis turns out to be wrong. He starts concentrating on why the patient’s liver failed. The male team is wondering who isn't a doctor. They start discussing the case instead. They think it might be a tumor, and wonder how to get away to test the patient. Amber sneaks out of the room when they realize they are being monitored from House's computer. The other team is testing the patient on a tilt table, but the patient enjoys it and shows no ill effects. House holds a "tribal council" in the lecture hall. He fires the men, but Amber comes in with a diagnosis of scleraderma, but House tells her she has the wrong diagnosis and that strongyloides was the right diagnosis. House tells the female applicants to put the patient on a feeding tube. Amber goes to Chase to get him to do the test she can't do to prove she was right. He knows he's being manipulated and thinks she's wrong, but agrees anyway. She goes to draw blood for the lab tests, and finds out it is green. They discuss why the patient's blood is green. The plastic surgeon thinks it is because he couldn't process the contrast dye through his kidneys. House admits that he was wrong about the strongyloides. They discuss why the patient's kidneys might be failing. House confronts Chase about helping Amber, who was officially fired. However, Chase stands up to him. Cameron tells House how much she likes Chase like this. The patient develops pneumonia and all the tests are coming back negative. Foreman finally determines the correct diagnosis - a fast acting form of lymphoma. He goes to his superior, who notes he hasn't ruled out infection and if he treats for cancer, the patient will die from the infection, but she counters that radiation therapy is too dangerous. She thinks he is still worried about the patient he lost with a wrong diagnosis and tells him not to make the same mistake twice and orders antibiotics. She tells him to confirm the cancer but he points out that if it is cancer, it will be too late to treat her once it's confirmed. Meanwhile, House is planning on removing the patient's eye to see what's wrong. Cuddy wants him to do a biopsy, but the patient will be dead before they can get the results. They suspect the patient has melanoma and even if they are successful, he may only have months to live. The patient is resigned to dying rather than spend the rest of his life in a bed. When House tells him the afterlife is bogus, Wilson throws him out of the room. Wilson then angrily confronts him about not letting the patient have a little comfort in his beliefs. When House says that it's all a lie and that "misery is better than nothing," Wilson tells him that he doesn't know any better than anyone whether there is an afterlife. Foreman stares at his whiteboard and decides to take his patient for radiation therapy. The team start palliative care on the patient. However, they discover that the patient isn't bleeding internally, which he should be doing if he has cancer. Amber gets a page from House, and as she approaches his office, finds he has electrocuted himself. She starts CPR. The team discuss what happened to House. Wilson comes in to speak to them and tells them he is alive but unconscious. They start talking about the case again. Grumpy finally suggests eosinophilic pneumonia House wakes up to find Wilson calling him an idiot. Wilson fills him in on the patient and tells him the clinic patient is dead. House said he did it because Wilson challenged him to see the afterlife for himself. However, Wilson reminds him that he has already had two other near-death experiences. Wilson asks House what he saw but House doesn't respond. Wilson says 'Just looking at you hurts. I'm gonna order up some more pain meds' to which House responds in an unexpectedly heartfelt tone 'I love you'. The applicants give the patient steroids for his pneumonia, but he doesn't get better. He asks for his companion dog to be placed on the bed with him. He finally goes into cardiac arrest and dies. Amber goes to see House to tell him the patient is dead. House gets out of bed to see the patient. She wants to know why he paged her, but he's evasive, claiming that she wouldn't let him die because she wouldn't get the job if he were gone. He goes to see the patient. House is discussing the patient with the applicants when they realize the dog is dead too. One of the applicants mentions that, often, companion animals will live beyond their normal lifespans to stay with their masters, dying soon after the human has passed. House asks Thirteen if she made sure the patient took his ivermectin, but she's not sure. It appears the dog swallowed them and died because of an adverse reaction to the medicine, because the dog is an English Shepherd it has a defect in the MDR1 gene. House finds the empty pill cup with dog teeth marks in it and tells Thirteen that the answer to the question was "No I didn't see him swallow the pills". Cuddy tells House he screwed up and is responsible for the mistake of his applicant. Meanwhile, Foreman’s patient quickly improves, confirming his diagnosis. However his superior fires him for going on a hunch and disobeying her orders instead of following protocol. They find the patient died of the strongyloides because he didn't take the pills and, because House suspected it was strongyloides and because he didn't get better on the ivermectin, House ruled it out. House goes to see the patient in the morgue and Thirteen says 'As soon as they cut open his lungs we saw the strongyloides'. House doesn't fire Thirteen, but does give her a lecture, reminding her that because she did screw up this time, she would never make the same mistake again, and he says he fired the rest of her team. Thirteen leaves and House says to Stark's body 'I'm sorry to say, I told you so' and takes a blanket and covers it over him. Clinic Patient House greets a patient, who pulls a knife, but instead of attacking House, sticks it in an electrical outlet to electrocute himself. House calls in a crash cart, but wonders why the patient would do this. He can't get Cuddy or Wilson interested in the problem. House goes to see the patient in intensive care. He tells House that he was in a head-on collision and was clinically dead for 97 seconds. However, he describes the experience as the best of his life. When House tries to give him a medical explanation, the patient rejects it, stating that he's done every hallucinogenic drug known to man, and the experience was nothing compared to that. The patient believes there is something after death. Despite not believing in the afterlife, House is surprised and intrigued. As his other patient has the same belief in the afterlife, House then derides his philosophical beliefs saying the afterlife is bogus. After arguing with Wilson, House goes back to see the clinic patient. But when the clinic patient looks at him, he leaves. After House electrocutes himself, in an 'experiment' to find out if there is an afterlife, House says to Wilson that he needs to talk to the clinic patient, but Wilson says 'The patient died an hour ago. What did you need to talk to him about?'. But House doesn't respond. Zebra Factor 2/10 Strongyloides isn’t endemic to New Jersey, but it is common in people who travel abroad. Major Events *It is shown that there are now ten fellowship applicants left in the game. *House pegs the applicant who will be revealed to be Lawrence Kutner as a former foster child. *House splits them in two teams: Men and Women with Amber Volakis joining the men's team. *Due to her very manipulative personality, Amber is dubbed Cutthroat Bitch by both House and Kutner which soon becomes her official nickname. *House meets a patient in the clinic who immediately electrocutes himself. *Now that he has become Head of Diagnostics at Mercy, Foreman is shown to be working with his own team. *Amber reveals that if she can get the women out of the game, she'll be part of House's new team which means two of the men will also get the two other open spots. She eventually joins them as a result but her plan fails. *Travis Brennan, Number 37 reveals that he worked with Doctors Without Borders for eight years and House figures out he's also engaged and only wants the job because the fiancé lives locally. *House drops hints about one of the men not being a real doctor. *House confronts the patient who purposely electrocuted himself in the clinic. The patient reveals that he was in an car accident and actually died at the scene. He described being technically dead as the best 97 seconds of his life but when he asks for his knife back, House refuses to give it to him. *Wilson and Amber meet for the first time although it's very brief. *House holds a Tribal Council in the hall and reveals that the men are fired. *In an attempt to stay in the game, Amber starts asking Chase and Cameron to help her out. *House confronts Chase over aiding Amber. *With the possibility of their respective patients having cancer, House calls Wilson in for a consult while at Mercy, Foreman takes the law into his own hands. *House and Wilson have an argument over the patient's beliefs about the afterlife. *At Mercy, Foreman goes against protocol to save a patient. *The clinic patient dies an hour before House regains consciousness, from House electrocuting himself to see if there is an afterlife. House never gets to talk to him about the afterlife. The clinic patient died because he had internal injuries when he electrocuted himself. *Stark, the main patient soon dies. *Amber confronts House over him paging her. *House learns that Stark's dog has also passed away and he, Jodi and Thirteen soon discover that the dog ate the pills intended for its owner. *Foreman is eventually fired from Mercy for disobeying his supervisor. *House fires Jodi Desai and the twins but spares Thirteen as he is confident she won't screw up again. *House says to Stark's body, 'I'm sorry to say, I told you so' implying he didn't see an afterlife. Trivia & Cultural References *The Confederates and the Yanks (Yankees) were the opposing sides in the American Civil War. *Jeffrey Cole’s nickname “Big Love” is from the American drama series of the same name about a polygamous fundamentalist Mormon. *In the Star Trek canon, Vulcans have copper based blood and “bleed green“ unlike humans who‘s red blood color comes from the iron in hemoglobin. Leonard Nimoy played the Vulcan Spock. *The reference to “72 virgins” is from the Islamic concept of heaven. It does not refer to a reward, but is merely used as a metaphor for how wonderful heaven is (so House, being a fan of metaphor, shouldn’t have jumped to a literal interpretation). “Virgin” is a crude translation of “Houri”, who are exceptionally attractive but also pure of heart. *A bit of irony. House is wrong about his patient having cancer and the patient dies, but House keeps his job even though he screwed up. Foreman is right about his patient having cancer and saves the patient’s life, but gets fired. Cast *Hugh Laurie as Gregory House *Lisa Edelstein as Lisa Cuddy *Omar Epps as Eric Foreman *Robert Sean Leonard as James Wilson *Jennifer Morrison as Allison Cameron *Jesse Spencer as Robert Chase *Anne Dudek as Amber Volakis *Edi Gathegi as Jeffrey Cole *Peter Jacobson as Chris Taub *Kal Penn as Lawrence Kutner *Olivia Wilde as Thirteen *Carmen Argenziano as Henry Dobson *Andy Comeau as Travis Brennan *Meera Simhan as Jodi Desai *Brian Klugman as Thomas Stark *Melinda Dahl as Twin 15A *Caitlin Dahl as Twin 15B *Charlie Hofheimer as Mark Allmore *Kathleen York as Dr. Schaffer *Mary Kate Schellhardt as Female Fellow *Reynaldo Rosales as Handsome Fellow *Douglas Spain as Latino Fellow *Bobbin Bergstrom as Nurse *Tommy Gerrits as Boy on Bike *Sara Holden as Driver *James A. Marshall as Delivery Man Category:Episodes Category:Season 4 Category:Episodes ending in the patient's death Category:Zebra Factor 2